Women's History Month

Sara was born on July 12, 1827, in Belchertown. The oldest daughter of Clarissa and Myron Lawrence arrived when John Quincy Adams, the son of John Adams, was president of the United States. The Adams legacy that provided presidents number two and six to the young republic underscored the importance of New England’s political influence that was increasingly fortified with abolitionist sentiment.

Abolition was a strongly held belief of the Lawrence family that was advanced through meaningful relationships with leaders of the movement and service in public office. Harriet Martineau, a French feminist and abolitionist, and Daniel Webster were among the luminaries who visited the Lawrence home. This was the cultural environment within which the child, Sara, was raised and flourished.

At the time of Sara’s birth, the young nation included 24 states and numerous territories with fluid boundaries due to pending agreements and disputes both foreign and domestic. However, what remained on the horizon was a revision to the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that would prove pivotal to American history and the life of Sara Lawrence. Meanwhile, during her formative years, 1827-1852, her father, Myron, a Belchertown attorney, served in both houses of the state legislature, including a stint as president of the Massachusetts Senate from 1837 to 1840. He was also a member of the 1844 commission on the boundary line between Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Sara received her formal education attending school in Belchertown and the New Salem Academy. While attending school, she fell and injured her spine. This injury resulted in a case of temporary blindness. Her condition was treated by Belchertown physician Dr. Charles Robinson.

Dr. Robinson's first wife, Sarah Adams, had died within three years of their marriage. This loss may well have been the impetus for him to join the 90,000 people who flocked to California in 1849 in pursuit of gold, where he became an advocate for the rights of squatters and engaged in the intense machinations of local and state government as California prepared for its 1850 admission as the 31st state of the Union. Dr. Robinson’s efforts resulted in an injury, time in prison, and election to the state assembly. Ultimately, he returned to Massachusetts, and married Sara T. D.  Lawrence on October 30, 1851.

In 1854 two events set in motion the pathway that secured Sara Robinson’s stature as a historic American figure. The first was Congress passing the Kansas-Nebraska Act that repealed the Missouri Compromise whereby popular sovereignty would determine whether a territory would enter the Union as a free or slave state. The second was the formation of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, championed by Massachusetts congressman Eli Thayer, as an entrepreneurial venture to populate the Kansas Territory with New England abolitionists. The goal was to start businesses and communities that would ensure Kansas would become a free state.

Robinson, possibly with Sara, attended a meeting, most likely held in Worcester, where Thayer made the appeal. After the meeting, the two men conferred and Thayer asked Robinson to become the official financial agent for the Kansas endeavor. No doubt, Robinson’s California experience transitioning territorial to state governance prepared him for the job. In July 1854, Robinson arrived in Kansas, and in the spring of 1855 Sara joined him, traveling the 1,400 miles by stagecoach to participate in establishing the community of Lawrence.

The town of Lawrence became the heart of rising tensions where cultural ruptures, resentments, and vengeful acts were branded by the New York Tribune as “Bleeding Kansas.” Raids and skirmishes between the Missouri slave state advocates and the Kansas free staters included such illustrious villains as the James Brothers and honored abolitionists like John Brown.

On May 21, 1856, a proslavery mob wrecked and burned the hotel and newspaper office in an effort to wipe out “the hotbed of abolitionism.” This became known as “the Sack of Lawrence” and was indicative of the antagonism that plagued Kansas’s path to statehood.

Kansas officially became a state on January 29, 1861, concurrent with the wave of 11 states seceding after the election of Abraham Lincoln as the 16th president of the United States. Dr. Charles Robinson became the first governor of Kansas and Sara Robinson, the First Lady of the state. The Civil War began in April of that same year.

Two-thirds of all Kansas men who were of age enlisted in the Union Army, and 8,500 of them were killed or wounded. Kansas suffered more casualties per capita than any other state.

At pre-dawn of August 21, 1863, the most vicious civilian attack during the Civil War was unleashed on free-state Lawrence when 400 Confederate guerillas led by William Quantrill decimated the town. They had a list of those they wanted to kill, but no man’s or boy’s life was safe. All homes and businesses were targets for torching. The final toll that day: 190 males executed, with 85 widows and mothers left to mourn. Dr. Robinson, though on the list for execution, escaped.

This brutal event has been dramatized in more than two dozen American films, television programs, and even in video games. As recent as 2005, a documentary titled Touched by Fire examined the horror. 

A firsthand account, Sara Robinson’s book, Kansas: Its Interior and Exterior Life, was first published in 1856, a faithful and eloquent recounting of every aspect of life in Kansas, including the conflicts. Sara’s contributions were not limited to historian and author. She founded a research table in the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, for young women. She gave the first donation toward marking the Santa Fe Trail. Upon her death in 1911 in Lawrence, Kansas, the couple's "Oakridge" home was bequeathed to the University of Kansas. In her will she also provided for the construction in 1923 of Lawrence Memorial Hall, Belchertown’s “new town hall.” Today, Sara’s portrait can be viewed at the Stone House Museum in Belchertown.

Thank you to Jim Gambaro for editing this piece. 

The Town of Belchertown’s website, the Stone House archives, the American Battlefield Trust, the University of Kansas Research Library, and Digital History served as sources for this article.